Editors Note – Google have recently confirmed their important searches of 2012, our associates at Techland from time magazine have compiled the list gadgets by the trending searches in 2012. These Gadgets are compiled by the most traffic compared to 2011. Meaning these are the gadgets that people most wanted to learn about. Nokia’s Lumia 900 Windows Phone handset was shown off in early January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as a comeback for the Finnish phone maker, which used the handset to announce its re-entrance into the U.S. market alongside carrier partner AT&T.

Our own Jared Newman referred to the Lumia 900 as “what is supposed to be the first Windows Phone in the United States worth caring about.”

You may wonder why Apple’s flagship smartphone for 2012 isn’t higher on the list, but seeing that this is a list of trending searches “that had the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011,” the placement makes more sense.

In 2011, expectations for something called the iPhone 5 were rampant. Instead, we got the iPhone 4S. And Apple launched the new handset in October, bucking previous June launches for iPhone handsets and almost certainly prolonging iPhone 5-related searches throughout the year. So there were a lot of “iPhone 5″ searches last year — enough to dilute this year’s searches down to the number nine slot.

Plenty of people have already moved on to Samsung’s Galaxy S III this year, but the Samsung Galaxy S II, released stateside late last year, showed some nice staying power.

With its big screen and powerful innards, the Android smartphone won enough awards and critical praise to make itself a viable alternative to the iPhone.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note smartphone line literally went big this year. The first Galaxy Note sported a 5.3-inch screen and was unveiled in Germany in late 2011 but wasn’t available for purchase stateside until early 2012. The Galaxy Note II — with its even bigger 5.55-inch screen — wasn’t unveiled until late 2012. Splitting the difference between phone and tablet form factors is no easy task, but Samsung is apparently making it work.

Microsoft is making its own hardware, that’s why the hoopla. In an attempt to show its hardware partners how it’s done, Microsoft took the bull by the horns and designed its own tablet to showcase the company’s overhauled, bold and touch-friendly Windows 8 operating system. As searches for “Microsoft Surface” in 2012 relate to searches for “Microsoft Surface” in 2011, the term’s high placement this year shouldn’t be too terribly shocking. Before this year, Microsoft Surface referred to giant touchscreen tables; that project has since been renamed to Microsoft PixelSense.

In late 2011, Amazon unveiled the Kindle Fire, a $200 tablet with access to Amazon’s cache of digital books, videos, music and more. In a time of the $500-and-up iPad and a slew of so-so Android tablets, the Kindle Fire’s low price point and simple interface made it a popular choice for people who wanted a tablet but didn’t want to spend a ton of money to get one. Since then, Amazon’s repeatedly dropped the price of the Kindle Fire and rolled out the 7- and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD line of tablets. It would be interesting to know which of this year’s “Kindle Fire” searches came from people looking for the old version of the tablet or one of the new versions, minus the “HD” at the end.

In late 2011, Amazon unveiled the Kindle Fire, a $200 tablet with access to Amazon’s cache of digital books, videos, music and more. In a time of the $500-and-up iPad and a slew of so-so Android tablets, the Kindle Fire’s low price point and simple interface made it a popular choice for people who wanted a tablet but didn’t want to spend a ton of money to get one. Since then, Amazon’s repeatedly dropped the price of the Kindle Fire and rolled out the 7- and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD line of tablets. It would be interesting to know which of this year’s “Kindle Fire” searches came from people looking for the old version of the tablet or one of the new versions, minus the “HD” at the end.

Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone can arguably be called the anti-iPhone poster child. Those Samsung ads making fun of Apple fans waiting in line? The current crop of those ads are for the Galaxy S III. Before its release in May, 2012, the phone reportedly became the most preordered gadget in history with 9 million early orders. As of November of this year, Samsung claims to have moved 30 million Galaxy S III handsets.

Some have clamored for a smaller, cheaper, easier to handle iPad since before Steve Jobs voiced his disdain for smaller tablets back in late 2010. It took a couple years, but the world finally got its miniature iPad. There was no shortage of rumors, speculation and crossed fingers leading up to the announcement, which almost certainly accounted for all the Google searches between 2011 and 2012.

Amusingly enough, when the iPad 3 was officially rolled out in March, Apple dropped the “3″ from the name, simply referring to it as “iPad”. The iPad 2 was kept around and discounted, but the year-long wait between the iPad 2 and what many believed would be called the iPad 3 apparently resulted in plenty of “iPad 3″ search terms between 2011 and 2012. Even now that Apple’s released the fourth-generation iPad to replace the third-generation iPad, it’s still tempting to search for “iPad 3″ when trying to differentiate the two.

Editors Note – Smaller, lighter media player computers always get our attention, and the new mac mini is an invention that will satisfy the MAC faithful and entice the window lot. With an i7 inside and 4gb of RAM you can really get the company’s jack-of-all-trades computer for your living room.

October 23rd was mostly the iPad mini’s coming out party; an event with one major headliner. But that newborn product didn’t enterApple’s ecosystem alone. Amidst the flurry of announcements, there was one other wee hardware relative on hand ready to join in on the launch festivities: a refreshed 2012 Mac mini. Addressing criticisms oflast year’s model, Apple added USB 3.0 ports, upgraded to third-generation Ivy Bridge Core processors and boosted the standard RAM allotment to 4GB (you can configure it with up to 16 gigs). Perhaps most interestingly, it’s now offering a hybrid storage option, the so-called FusionDrive, which combines flash memory with a SATA HDD. Continue reading Mac mini review (2012)→